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A serious man

Two major newspapers pick up on a theme today that First Read introduced earlier this week: Herman Cain isn’t running a particularly serious presidential campaign.

The former pizza executive insists that he’s in the 2012 race to win it, and his message is clearly resonating with quite a few Republican primary voters. But Cain is doing very little of the traditional work of mounting a White House bid.

[I]t is not clear that Mr. Cain, 65, has any particular plan to seize this moment, beyond using the attention to sell books. Like the other candidates vying to become credible alternatives to Mr. Romney and Mr. Perry, Mr. Cain is operating on a shoestring. He raised $2 million last spring. More money is coming in, he said, and he has 40 staff members, mostly in Southern states. Still, an adviser to the campaign said the campaign had only four people working in Iowa, and there is no plan to change strategy. …

When asked why he would launch a book tour while running for the presidential nomination, Mr. Cain said that “the two complement one another” and that the benefits go beyond raising his name recognition among voters — one of his main goals.

Some former Cain campaign staffers say Mr. Cain appears to lack organizational focus. His campaign has no regular conference calls or team meetings, and it has lacked a campaign manager for much of his bid. …

"Organization was a real challenge," [former Cain adviser Matt] Murphy said. "New Hampshire is an ideal state for a candidate like him without a lot of name recognition or money for advertising. But his strategy has seemed more like a national campaign than a targeted, state-by-state local one."

Mr. Cain's latest book tour has raised those fears anew because it includes stops in states that don't vote early, like his coming visit to a Costco in suburban Virginia.

The underlying question here is whether Cain is running a bad campaign or whether he’d rather be famous than president.

The question is? Is Cain just anouther race baiter? We dont need to replace one race baiter with anouther. "O"whatabummer is enough. Cain has allready accused Perry of RACISM. Like the democrat party is that all Cain has to offer the american voter?

Anyone who has worked on or around Presidential campaigns knows the Cain effort is anything but orthodox - has been from the beginning. One of the first things Cain told his assembled audience on Centennial Olympic Plaza in Atlanta when he announced was, "I'm not running for second!"

If you think he's not serious, then you'll fit in very well with the political class here in DC.

But don't overlook this: Mr. Cain chose, from day 1, to run his campaign like a business - not a political campaign. Rejecting campaign nomenclature, his staff all have business titles (CEO, CFO, CMO, etc.). Intentionally, this is how he plans on running the country. Imagine having a balanced budget. It's easy if you try.

Today, the Washington Post ran a major piece on the GOP field now that Sarah and Christie have bowed out. Even though many polls, including a CBS poll two days ago, placed Cain as TIED WITH ROMNEY (!!), the Washington Post did not mention Cain one time, but did mention Bachmann (remember her?).

This benign neglect has not bothered Cain, nor has it deterred his supporters. In fact, it has energized and grown his base.

Is Romney a conservative? Honestly, I can't answer that. Does he have a plan? Not sure of that, either. He's a talented Wall Street executive with world class financial acumen. He'd make a great chairman of the Fed.

Is Herman Cain a conservative. Damn straight he is. Does he have a plan? 9-9-9. How many people in crowd shots at a Romney rally do you see repeating his plan? Exactly.

Cain, while often dismissed as "that Pizza guy" was the first full-time President and CEO of the National Restaurant Association with 14 million employees - perhaps the largest collection of small businesses in the nation - and one of the most powerful lobbies in DC. He's flipped burgers, turned around lost causes, including surviving liver cancer. He doesn't play to lose.

If you don't think this man is serious, or knows what he's doing, then just keep thinking that. And while he's "off task" signing his books for 4 or 5 days and adding to his name ID by having a New York Times Bestseller, you can keep referring to traditional campaign checklist and focus on all the things he's NOT doing. Meanwhile, the 100,000+ who buy his book will be getting to know him and his story. He may not have the bucks to buy as many :30's as Romney does right now, but when this small army has finished reading his book, they will have spent somewhere between five and eight hours studying Herman Cain. And they'll like him. They'll talk about him. They won't have any questions about him. And they'll donate, raise funds and vote for him.

And it wouldn't surprise Herman Cain at all if, come 11/6/2012, this conventional path that the political class and pundits dismissed actually finds him White House bound.

The question is? Is Cain just anouther race baiter? We dont need to replace one race baiter with anouther. "O"whatabummer is enough. Cain has allready accused Perry of RACISM. Like the democrat party is that all Cain has to offer the american voter?

Herman Cain showed that he was Black First when he responded to the Texas rock episode. His first inclination was to pounce - as did Obama concerning the Harvard Professor and the police. Then, Sharpton and Steele jumped in with Cain.

The bloggers came out strongly against Cain. His handlers apparently told Cain, then he started walking it back.

Political operative in Washington who quietly backs Perry said of Cain: “He's said some crazy stuff. Once they dig and hit him, he'll crash.”

Here's some...

and this....

Herman Cain found himself in hot water Monday with Latino Republicans after telling an audience that his solution to illegal immigration along the Mexican border would include a Great Wall of China-like electrified fence that would rise 20 feet high above a moat filled with alligators.

"Now, my fence might be part Great Wall and part electrical technology," Cain continued. "It will be a 20-foot wall, barbed wire, electrified on the top, and on this side of the fence, I'll have that moat that President Obama talked about. And I would put those alligators in that moat!" - Herman Cain

"We call on Herman Cain to drop his candidacy for president. His recent comments and lack of practical solutions to solving illegal immigration show he’s not a serious candidate," the Somos Republicans group wrote in a statement released Monday.

THERE GOES CAIN'S REPUBLICAN LATINO VOTE!!!

and this...

"Ironically the fast food industry is one of the sectors of our economy that is heavily dependent on undocumented immigrant workers, so we can’t help but wonder if Cain’s wealth from this industry was built on undocumented immigrant labor!" the group wrote.